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Study Shows Hosted Contact Center Solutions Can Reduce TCO

January 14, 2009

By Susan J. CampbellTMCnet Contributing Editor

Contact centers have a long reputation of draining capital resources of the company it supports. As the practice is often to associate the contact center as merely a cost and not examining the real impact it has on revenues and controlling costs by protecting the customer base, it is often assumed that the contact center is more expensive than it actually is.

According to inContact Inc., a provider of on-demand customer contact center software, a recent report on a study of 200 contact center operations, the cast majority of contact centers revealed a lower total cost of ownership and improved functionality with an on-demand system.

ContactBabel (News - Alert) carried out the study, entitled, "The US Contact Center Operational Review (2nd edition)". The report found that those respondents who had switched from a traditional premise-based solution to a fully-hosted solution and experienced a lower TCO and improved functionality were in the 90 percent range.

The report also highlighted that 80 percent of respondents discovered that making critical system changes is easier in a hosted environment. Especially now that the economy is in a tailspin, flexibility and scalability can be essential for companies trying to contain costs while aiming to stay competitive in the market.

The report's author, Steve Morrell, commented in a company statement: "One of the biggest advantages of hosted solutions is the savings related to minimizing or eliminating capital expenses. Most respondents stated that operating expense funding was easier to get than capital expense funding, especially for those in the transport and travel, services and insurance sectors."

"Many in-house, premise-based contact centers also reported they do not find it easy to scale or add functionality rapidly," continued Morrell, "and their current technology prevented them from doing what they wanted. In the current economic climate, hosted solutions seem to offer a rapid and flexible way to improve functionality without the sign-off requirement for capital expenditure."

"The US Contact Center Operational Review carried out by ContactBabel confirms what we have been hearing from our large and growing customer base for some time now," said Frank Maylett, executive vice president of sales at inContact, in the company statement.

"On-demand hosted systems make contact centers more efficient in every way and greatly simplify system changes and functionality enhancements.”

For those operating in the contact center space, productivity and efficiency are essential and hosted solutions are proving to be a sound investment, especially for those companies operating in volatile markets. The ContactBabel report demonstrates that hosted solutions are worth the time to investigate.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi

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